As I previously suspected, it looks like the 6600 is the "new" Radeon 9600-- eg, it has the best "bang for the watt" of this generation of video cards. That's assuming you do occasionally play 3d games.

There is a huge leap in power draw (and performance) going from a 6600 to 6600gt though, so be careful!

If you're not a gamer, maybe the 6200 or even integrated graphics. Hard to get lower wattage than integrated graphics.

X-bit labs have a new article comparing current videocards by power consumption and noise. Frustratingly, other than dividing the cards into five categories, they don't give any indication of performance.

Jeff Atwood had a blog entry that computed the same graphs above. Presumably he used what's been done here as a model (same benchmark used, same format, etc.), but he used updated benchmarks and the latest xbitlabs power report.

Pretty clear trend: Geforce 7xxx series is the most efficient video card available, at least according to 3dMark2006. One thing that still peeves me is that xbitlabs tested an underclocked 7600GT as their 7600GS, which is decidedly invalid, since the 7600GS has a lower core voltage. So the 7600GS likely has a higher efficiency than the number Jeff arrived at.

I'm looking for a low-power video card for a 24/7 media center pc. So I'm very much intrigued by the NVidia 7300GS's idle power of only 9W.

There doesn't seem to be a fanless model of the 7300GS. However, the 7300LE comes fanless as the Asus EN7300LE. So I'm wondering if I can expect the LE to have a similarly low power consumption. It's a little bit less powerful than the GS (see http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7300.html), but does that automatically mean lower power consumption? Does anyone know of any test reports that address this?

Analysis: The 8800 GTX sets new records and the 2D power draw is currently seriously flawed. I heard the card does not downclock at all. A system with this card uses at idle as much power as a system with a Geforce 7800 GT or a ATi Radeon X1800 XL at full load! Judging from the numbers in previous posts this correspondends to 60W idle!

It would be nice to have a more current list to use when comparing computing power/DC power and computing power/sound.

It'd be even better if a cheat sheet like that was made with TDP, idle and load measurements right in the same table...

_________________.Please put a country in your profile if you haven't already.This site is international but I'll assume you are in the US if you don't tell me otherwise.RAID levels thread http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=388987

Here's one. Only the difference from idle to full load is available, and it goes from 40-55W. Ignore the gigabyte passive card test, as they let the card fry and then complain of the card noise/temp/consumption

They also have a "noise" test, but it's only of a very relative usefulness as their systems produce 44+db@idle

After many steps on the wrong direction concerning power draws, there is finally some serious power management available. The 2400/2600 series of ATI clock back quite a lot (and hopefully also scale down the voltage). Idle power draw is even lower than a 7600 GT. Except for the 2600 XT GDDR4 which seems to have a defective BIOS.
Keeping in mind the speed, tey seem to be a pretty good solution for systems which are not for gaming Whole system power draw as ususal. Link

The techreport article linked earlier is useful. I have a question about the Geforce 8 series cards, particularly the 8600 GT(S): how much can these be underclocked without compromising stability, and does that affect the idle power draw at all? I would expect it to because overclocking increases the draw (according to that article), but on the other hand, i thought at idle the GPU circuitry would all be shut down, anyway.

Also, is there any easy way to reversibly undervolt the new Geforce cards? E.g. a provision in the drivers.

About HD 3870 and HD 3850:
German magazine C't measured the following card-only watts idle/load:3870: 31/81 - 3850: 16/51 - 8800 GT: 35/80 - 2900 XT: 58/152IAX-Tech measured with no GPU and saw +19 W for a HD3850 and +25 W for a HD 3870.
Anandtech says 40 - 42 W less on idle and comparable at load vs. a 8800 GT
PC Games Hardware puts the idle consumption even lower.
Hothardware.com says, 27-29 W less at idle and 49 - 59 W less at load vs. a 8800 GT.
Vr-Zone says, both cards are comparable to a 8800 GT.
Firingsquad says, at idle it's comparable to a 8600 GTS and 19-21 W better than a 8800 GT. At load, it leans more forward the 8800 GT.
techreport.com says, it's a bit lower than a 8600 GTS and 20-26 W ahead of the 8800 GT. At load, they are comparable to the 8600 GTS.

About the Radeon HD 3850:
Hardtecs4u.de says it's 23 W less than idle than a factory overclocked 8800 GT and on par with a 8600 GT/GTS. At load it's between the 8600 GT/GTS and HD 2600. They where very impressed with the noise (< 1 sone all the time).
Hartware.net says, idle is comparable to 8600/HD 2600 and load is quite a bit better than 8800 GT.

About the Radeon HD 3870:
Legionhardware says, at idle it needs 17 W more than a IGP and 19 W less than a 8800 GT. Load is roughly comparable.

Conclusion: Amazing how different the test results are.

The C't says, not only are vcore and frequency dropped, but the shader core shuts itself down when not needed (e.g. games with vsync).

Last edited by jojo4u on Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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